Alicia de Larrocha dies at age 86

Alicia de Larrocha, a diminutive Spanish pianist esteemed for her elegant Mozart performances and regarded as an incomparable interpreter of Albéniz, Granados, Mompou and other Spanish composers, died on Sept. 25, 2009. She was 86. Alicia de Larrocha y de la Calle was born in Barcelona on May 23, 1923, to Eduardo de Larrocha and Maria Teresa de la Calle. Although her mother gave up any ambition of a performing career when she married, Ms. de Larrocha's aunt was a piano teacher at the Academia Marshall, a school founded by the pianist Frank Marshall, who was also a Granados student.
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Arthur Ferrante Dies at 88

Arthur Ferrante, of the superb twin-piano team of Ferrante and Teicher, has passed away at the age of 88. Lou Teicher, you'll recall, died in August of 2008. The Los Angeles Times obituary can be read here: Arthur Ferrante Dies at 88.
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Fred Mills, 70

Fred Mills, a trumpeter who played for 24 years with the Canadian Brass, has died in an automobile accident. He was 70.
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Conductor ERICH KUNZEL dies at age 74

Erich Kunzel, Jr. (March 21, 1935 – September 1, 2009) was an American conductor and long time conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Kunzel was born in New York City. He was a timpanist and music arranger at his high school in Greenwich, Connecticut and received his first music degree from Dartmouth College. He also studied at Harvard and Brown universities. From 1960 to 1965 he conducted the Rhode Island Philharmonic. From 1965 to 1977 he was associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
When the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra board of trustees created the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (CPO) in 1977, Kunzel was named conductor.
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CHRIS CONNOR, vocalist was 81

Chris Connor, a Kansas City native and prominent big-band jazz singer of the 1940s, ‘50s and beyond, died on Saturday 29 August 2009, of cancer. She was 81.
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Hildegard Behrens dies, 72

Soprano Hildegard Behrens, one of the finest Wagnerian performers of her generation, has died while traveling in Japan. She was 72.
Jonathan Friend, artistic administrator of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said Tuesday in an e-mail to opera officials that Behrens felt unwell while traveling to a festival near Tokyo. She went to a Tokyo hospital, where she died of an apparent aneurism.
Friend's e-mail was shared with The Associated Press by Jack Mastroianni, director of IMG Artists.
Her funeral was planned in Vienna.
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Guitarist/inventor Les Paul dead at 94

Les Paul, who pioneered the solid-body electric guitar later wielded by a legion of rock 'n' roll greats, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 94.
According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side...MORE - SHOP Les Paul

Conductor Sir Edward Downes was 85

Renowned British conductor Sir Edward Thomas Downes, CBE, has died at the age of 85, after travelling to right-to-die clinic Dignitas with his wife.
He and his wife Joan, 74, both chose to end their lives at the Swiss clinic, their family said in a statement.
According to the statement, the couple "died peacefully, and under circumstances of their own choosing".
The Birmingham-born conductor enjoyed a 40-year relationship with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Harve Presnell dies of cancer, age 75

Harve Presnell (September 14, 1933 - June 30, 2009) was a Golden Globe-winning American film, musical theatre and television actor and singer.
His height, booming voice, and operatic training landed him the role of Johnnie Brown in Meredith Willson's musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown on stage which premiered on Broadway in 1960. He later reprised the role in the 1964 film version. He appeared as a cavalry scout in The Glory Guys (1965) and sang the stirring "They Call the Wind Maria" in the 1969 film Paint Your Wagon. Presnell did some other film and television work in the 1960s and early 1970s, but for the next couple of decades concentrated primarily on stage work, playing Rhett Butler in the West End production of Scarlett and touring the United States as Daddy Warbucks in Annie and its sequel, Annie Warbucks, among other productions.

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Pop singer-actress Gale Storm dies

Josephine Owaissa Cottle (April 5, 1922 - June 27, 2009), better known as Gale Storm, was an American actress and singer, who starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show and had a few modest pop recording hits of the day.
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Kenny Rankin

Kenny Rankin's record label says the veteran singer-songwriter has died of lung cancer. He was 67. Rankin died Sunday, 7 JUNE 2009, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The cause of death was lung cancer. In a career spanning 50 years, Rankin worked with such artists as Bob Dylan, wrote songs for Peggy Lee and Mel Torme and released his own acclaimed recordings, including "The Kenny Rankin Album" in 1976.

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Composer, Maw, dead at 73

Nicholas Maw, one of Britain's leading composers, has died at the age of 73.
The composer, whose works include Odyssey and the opera Sophie's Choice, died in Washington DC where he had lived for 24 years.
He had been ill for some time and died of heart failure on Tuesday, his spokeswoman told the BBC.

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Sax man Bud Shank dies at 82

Bud Shank, an alto saxophonist and flutist whose career spanned more than a half century, died April 2 at his home in Tucson, Ariz. The cause pulmonary failure. A day earlier Shank had been in San Diego recording a new album. Shank was 82. Born May 27, 1926 in Dayton, Ohio, Clifford Everett “Bud” Shank tried his hand at a variety of woodwinds before settling on the saxophone. He attended college in North Carolina and worked with saxophonist Charlie Barnet before moving to California in the late 1940s, where he played with trumpeter Shorty Rogers and then pianist Stan Kenton. Working with guitarist Laurindo Almeida, Shank was also one of the first jazz musicians to explore Brazilian music. Shank cut a number of albums for the world music label World Pacific from the ’50s to the ’70s.

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Film composer Maurice Jarre dies

French composer Maurice Jarre, best known for his music for Hollywood films, has died in Los Angeles at 84, after suffering from cancer. Jarre, father of the composer Jean-Michel Jarre, rose to prominence relatively late in life. His breakthrough came in 1962 when he wrote the score for Lawrence of Arabia, for which he was awarded an Oscar. He won two further Oscars for Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India, and composed music for more than 150 films.

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Songwriter JACK LAWRENCE 96 years.

Songwriter Jack Lawrence, whose "Tenderly" launched the career of Rosemary Clooney and put Bobby Darin on the map with English lyrics to "Beyond the Sea," has died at the age of 96. Lawrence fell Saturday in his Redding home, fracturing his pelvic bone. He died Sunday at Danbury Hospital from complications of the injury. Lawrence's name may not be as widely known as those of his contemporaries Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and George Gershwin, but his melodies and lyrics launched the careers of at least a dozen top stars. In addition to Clooney and Darin, Frank Sinatra had his first solo hit with "All or Nothing at All" and "If I Didn't Care" launched The Ink Spots.

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Death of American Song composer Sunny Skylar

Sunny Skylar (October 11, 1913 – February 2, 2009) was an American composer, singer, lyricist, and music publisher. He was born Selig Shaftel in Brooklyn, New York. As a singer, he appeared with a number of big bands, including those led by Ben Bernie, Paul Whiteman, Abe Lyman, and Vincent Lopez. After the end of the big band era, he continued to sing in nightclubs and theaters until 1952. Among the songs he wrote (either music or lyrics) are:
Amor
And So to Sleep Again
Bésame Mucho Traduction of the original Mexican song
Gotta Be This or That
Hair of Gold, Eyes of Blue
Love Me with All Your Heart
Where There's Smoke, There's Fire
You're Breaking My Heart

Swedish composer Erland von Koch dead, 98 years old

Erland von Koch received his diploma as an organist and cantor from the Music Conservatory in Stockholm in 1935. He spent the following years studying composition, conducting, and piano in Germany and France. After a couple of years at the Swedish Radio, he worked as a teacher of music theory at the conservatory in Stockholm from 1953-1975. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 1957, and was named a Professor in 1968. Among his awards were the Royal Swedish Academy of Music's medal for contributions to music in 2000. He was a versatile composer and wrote five symphonies, 12 Scandinavian dances, the Impusli and Oxberg trilogies, 12 concerti for solo instruments, numerous solo works, string quartets, the children's opera Pelle Svanslos, five ballets, songs, psalms, and film music.(among other things, he wrote the music for one of Ingmar Bergman's early films). "I strive for a simple, clear melodic style, preferably associated with folk music, and with a clear-cut rhythmic profile. I want my harmony to be uncomplicated," he said about his own composing. Erland von Koch passed away at the end of January, three months before his 99th birthday.

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Jazz drumming legend Louie Bellson died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 84.

Born Luigi Balassoni, Bellson established himself as a premier big band drummer in the 1940s, drumming with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Harry James. He played with Duke Ellington in the early 1950s and in small groups with Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson. Peterson, who was an exacting judge of musicianship, said that Bellson represented "the epitome of musical talent." The video above, from 1957, documents Bellson's renowned soloing ability. Bellson was married for 40 years to singer Pearl Bailey, who said of her husband: "to listen and see Louie is to know Man's love of music." (Bailey died in 1990.) In November last year, Bellson was hospitalized after breaking his hip during a fall. In January, he was transferred to a rehabilitation facility, where he was undergoing a regimen of physical therapy. His passing on the weekend was unexpected. He was active musically until recently. His drumming and composing were featured on a big band CD recorded in 2007 and released last year -- Louie & Clark Expedition 2 -- a project with him and fellow octuagenarian Clark Terry.

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Conductor John McGlinn passed away

American conductor and musical theatre archivist John McGlinn passed away Saturday February 14th, 2009. He was one of the principal proponents of making authentic studio cast recordings of classic musical theatre works. McGlinn was the music director for the off-Broadway productions of Jerome Kern's SITTING PRETTY (1989) and THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE (1990). McGlinn was active in the recording studio in the 1980's and his complete recordings of Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein's SHOW BOAT and Cole Porter's ANYTHING GOES are considered to be the definitive representations of those productions. McGlinn made his operatic debut in 1993 conducting for the Juilliard Opera Theatre. He made his New York City Opera debut in 1996. For many years he was active in the restoration and recording of American stage works, recording with such artists as Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Ruth Ann Swenson, Teresa Stratas, Jerry Hadley and Roberta Peters, and recorded Fieber with Ian Bostridge and the orchestra of NDR Hannover. He has performed and recorded with the London Sinfonietta, the London Symphony, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Bologna Opera, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic and the BBC Concert Orchestra, among many others.

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Molly Bee dies at 69; country singer

Molly Bee, a country singer popular in the 1950s and 1960s who was a teenage star on television's "Hometown Jamboree" and "The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show," has died. She was 69. Bee, who lived in Carlsbad, Calif., died Saturday of complications related to a stroke.

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